Category: News Feeds

The “screamer” was a creature that existed in law firm lore to terrorize new associates and staff. There was always some partner — or partners — within the firm structure whose book of business shielded them from common workplace courtesy. Screamers didn’t have to actually scream at anyone. Sure, there were tales of partners hurling objects out the window — or at other attorneys — but more often than not the abuse manifests in the sort of passive-aggressive dress downs that systematically undermine a person’s basic sense of self-worth.

While mental health initiatives are getting some press these days, but these programs almost always focus on providing wellness services to those facing stress, without directly confronting those in management positions about treating employees better, and by extension, keeping stress down.

A series of tips received here at Above the Law — hodgepodged together into one cohesive narrative below — tell a story that, if true, would be a stark reminder that in Biglaw circles, management maintains a stigma when it comes to mental health and a significant blindspot when it comes to the possibility that a partner might be contributing to a hostile environment:

An associate left the office in an ambulance. An abusive partner had pushed the associate hard for years and it apparently became too much on the latest matter. The group is dismissing it and trying to sweep it under the rug as the associate’s shortcomings because it was mental health related.

We’ve only heard from people sympathetic to the associate in this instance so we’re not going to speculate on the truth of the matter, but the fact that associates feel that the firm would not only downplay an abusive relationship, but would see mental health as an excuse to shift blame entirely upon the victim, speaks to the fractured sense of trust in the work environment. If mental health enters the vocabulary of the legal profession, it can’t come in only as a means to whitewash bad management.

In another story, a legal secretary has filed suit over a pair of Venable partners who “yelled, humiliated and demeaned her to such an extent that their conduct constituted sex discrimination under California’s fair employment law.”

“The days when an attorney can make enough money to excuse the verbal abuse and humiliation of the women that work for him are over,” the suit says. “Legal staff is not required to tolerate and even babysit lawyers through tantrums supposedly caused by ‘stress’ or ‘pressure.’ Verbal abuse and humiliation alter the terms and conditions of employment. When this conduct is directed at women, it is sex discrimination.”

While there are certainly scenarios where this sort of abuse comes from a place of gender dynamics and only targets women, this abuse is not always a matter of sex discrimination and it’s unfortunate that this rubric is one of the only effective means of addressing it. Too many instances can slip through the cracks when sex isn’t the clear impetus behind the abuse.

But more important than finding the right legal redress, firm leadership across the industry needs to get its act together and start holding peers accountable. There’s no amount of rainmaking that justifies keeping a hurricane in a corner office. We often point out that a law degree doesn’t necessarily provide business acumen, but it also fails to train management skills. Biglaw firms should start taking this seriously too.

Legal secretary’s suit claims partners’ tirades constituted sex bias, caused panic attack [ABA Journal]

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Officials in Sacramento have been critical of the State Bar of California for not maximizing revenue from leasing space in its San Francisco headquarters, as I recently reported.

Apparently, the Howard Street Coffee Roastery was a victim of the State Bar altering its approach to real estate management.

The coffee shop long housed on State Bar property permanently closed its doors at the end of July.

Owner Jane Heng said the shop was told months ago its lease would not be renewed, which she suspected was because the bar wanted to raise its lease rates. She said the news the coffee shop would have to leave left her in tears.

“All of the small businesses are being kicked out, and the giants are coming in,” Heng said, speaking about broader trends in the city. “It is so sad.”

State Bar spokeswoman Teresa Ruano said the bar’s goal “is to maximize the profitability of its assets.”

“As leases expire, new leases are negotiated at current market rates,” Ruano wrote in an email. “The Coffee Roastery did not communicate a desire to continue leasing the space at current market rates. The State Bar is currently negotiating a lease for this space with another food operator.”

Attorneys who defend practitioners facing State Bar Court charges are among those disappointed to see the coffee shop go.

Samuel C. Bellicini, an ethics lawyer based in San Rafael, said he would visit the Coffee Roastery every time he visited the State Bar.

“I saw Jane, bought a cup of coffee and tipped her,” Bellicini said. “We loved and adored her.”

He questioned the bar’s priorities, amid all that is on the agency’s plate.

“Don’t we have bigger fish to fry than to kick out a coffee shop everybody loved?” Bellicini said.

Jonathan I. Arons, a San Francisco ethics lawyer, is another fan of the Coffee Roastery who bemoaned its closing.

“I’ve been a devotee almost since they opened,” he said. “When I had trial at the State Bar, I would go in every morning.”

“I’m a fan of the smaller places rather than the Starbucks-type places,” Arons added.

Heng said there are no plans for the Coffee Roastery to open in another location.

The news about the coffee shop’s closure comes in the aftermath of the state auditor reporting that the California bar is leasing spaces in its headquarters at below-market rates.

“In 2018 and 2019, [the] State Bar entered into four leases for its San Francisco building with below-market rates that range from $12 to $28 per square foot less than those of comparable properties,” the audit said. “Even if [the] State Bar had leased its space at the lowest of the appraiser’s market rates, it would have earned $777,000 in additional revenue in just the first year of the four leases.”

Meanwhile, the California Assembly recently amended the bar’s annual funding bill to express the Legislature’s intent that “all leases entered into by the State Bar for lease of State Bar property on and after January 1, 2020, be at or above market rate in order to reduce licensing fees.”

Lyle Moran is a freelance writer in San Diego who handles both journalism and content writing projects. He previously reported for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Diego Daily Transcript, Associated Press, and Lowell Sun. He can be reached at lmoransun@gmail.com and found on Twitter @lylemoran.

The Bankers Association of Zimbabwe, which represents the nation’s 21 lenders, “would defend the action,” the organization’s legal representatives said in the court documents, filed last week. The association had been served with a summons on July 24 giving them 10 days to respond to claims from Cambria’s Paynet and Payserv units in Zimbabwe.

The battle between London-based Cambria and the association reached boiling point in June when Paynet, one of the country’s largest providers of bulk payments such as salaries, suspended services to banks, citing unpaid bills. It forced the lenders to switch to smaller providers or resort to manually managing payments, hindering the flow of money in the cash-starved $31 billion economy, already grappling with rampant inflation and mass unemployment.

Cambria on Tuesday said banks had closed their Paynet gateway, preventing compliant lenders from transacting with them and hindering the orderly flow of payments. The company is betting a partnership with Ecocash, the mobile-money unit of Econet Wireless Ltd., will help it recover some of the lost revenue from the dispute with the banks.

“If not successful, Cambria will need to significantly downsize its operations in Zimbabwe, as it continues to pursue legal recourse through the courts of Zimbabwe,” the company said, adding it may also approach courts in neighboring South Africa, or the U.K..

Wearing a MAGA hat or any other conservative paraphernalia does not make me a white supremacist, anti-Semite, bigot or any other stereotype that may be misapplied. The purpose of wearing a MAGA hat is to identify as a supporter of Donald Trump and as a believer in conservative values. …

Freedom of speech is also what allows a student to wear a MAGA hat or a #BuildTheWall T-shirt. Freedom of speech allows me to tell [Professor] Omari that he is wrong, and that his interpretation of a MAGA hat is nothing but a grotesque attack on the politics of a student. …

This is my struggle and the struggle of the conservative law student. With an overwhelming majority of faculty falling left on the political spectrum, some will inevitably take strides to not only push their ideology on students, but to also ensure that conservative voices are not heard in the conversation. This happens through contrived dress codes and insinuating, or even enforcing, the mandatory removal of MAGA hats in the classroom.

— Austin Phelps, a third-year student at Gonzaga University School of Law, in response to Professor Jeffrey Omari’s commentary piece in the ABA Journal where he said he believed that Phelps, who was then unnamed, was attempting to “intimidate and/or racially antagonize” him by wearing a MAGA hat. Phelps, who was once reprimanded for wearing a T-shirt which read “#BuildTheWall” to his internship, goes on to note that conservative law students are hesitant to identify with their politics out loud because they want “untainted employment references,” “do not want a target on our back[s],” and “simply want to finish law school without any major incidents.”

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Generally issues of guardianship arise as the result of trauma or tragedy. For children, guardians are sought after parents die or when they are unable to provide care. For the elderly or infirmed, guardians are appointed by courts when individuals are unable to take care of  themselves. This pertains to personal or financial needs. Sometimes guardians are appointed for individuals with special needs to assist them with making personal or monetary decisions. Recently, however, news outlets have reported another, less conventional impetus for guardianship: Tuition.

It has been reported that certain parents, particularly in the State of Illinois, have petitioned courts to transfer legal guardianship to third parties in order to better situate their children for financial aid scholarships at colleges and universities. In these jurisdictions, the laws for the transfer of guardianship are broad, if not vague. In certain jurisdictions, a petition for guardianship may be granted with little evidence of rationale or reason as to why a guardianship of a minor, with living and able parents, is needed. The guardianship may even be on the brink of adulthood — that is, junior and senior years of high school — when college applications are filed.

Certain universities, like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discovered a trend in students applying with legal guardianships and in response have intensified their review of applications, as has the Department of Education. This particular action of transferring guardianship means that in reviewing a financial aid application, only the student child’s earnings are considered. The family’s wealth or asset level are not part of the analysis as to a financial aid reward.  Apparently families have been known to consult with certain college preparation firms to learn these kinds of strategies for savings.

Those in defense of such a guardianship, in order to receive financial aid, argue that it is in the “best interest” of the child. The rationale is that financial aid packages will allow students to afford the best universities. The Department of Education counters that because a child under a legal guardianship continues to receive medical and financial support from her parents, it is not a  true guardianship under the spirit of the law and she is still considered a dependent student.

The use of guardianship for financial aid is not the first time the law has been used to change relationships for economic gain. Historically, for inheritance purposes, many have used adoption in order to give legal standing to individuals so that they may having standing as “heirs.” Standing means the ability to contest a will and to have notice of any wills filed. It also means that if there is no will, the next-of-kin receives the estate pursuant to the intestate statutes.

In Minary v. Citizens Fidelity Bank & Trust Co. (1967), a woman was adopted by her husband in order to receive a share as an “heir” from her husband’s mother’s estate. The  Kentucky appellate court did not recognize her as an heir, reasoning that her impetus for the adoption was to take under the estate. Allowing the adoption, the court held, would “thwart the intent of the ancestor whose property is being distributed and cheat the rightful heirs.

At one time, the practice of adult adoption was common amongst same-sex couples, prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage.  Adopting a partner made individuals into next-of-kin and situated survivors in the courts, able to defend decedents’ wills against more distant family or contest estate plans that excluded them. In many cases, it also saved on inheritance taxes, creating a family relationship between decedent and beneficiary. The created familial relationship also gave standing to the new relative to be included in health care decisions.

Arguably, the impetus in Minary was different than the same-sex couple adoption cases. In the latter, individuals were denied the right to marry and so they used the law to be treated with the same rights as any surviving spouse. In Minary, it seems that the law was being used to frustrate a third party’s plans for the disposition of her estate. In cases of adult adoption or in the instant matter, transfer of guardianship, it is important to look not only at the purpose, but at the effect. When guardianships are transferred, those who might not qualify for financial aid with their natural guardians suddenly do. Perhaps their awards take away from other students who naturally qualify for financial aid and whose parents cannot afford a consultant.

It is well-known that the law allows individuals to use planning strategies in order to save money or qualify for governmental programs. In the practice of trusts and estates and elder law, this occurs frequently with tax and Medicaid planning. While technically legal, it is imperative to look at who is impacted directly from the guardianship proceeding. No one doubts that parents’ efforts to gain financial aid are for the ultimate best interest of getting children college educations, however, it should not be at the expense of others, or at the expense of the guardianship law itself, whose intent is to protect those who are most vulnerable.

Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com. 

One by one, Biglaw firms across the country have realized that in order to recruit and retain the best talent, they need to offer the best perks and policies for a progressive new generation of lawyers. That may be why yet another firm has decided to truly support its attorneys — and staff members — who are embarking upon the fantastic journey into parenthood.

Which firm is the latest to modernize its parental leave policies? That would be Taft Stettinius & Hollister, which recently announced that a new, gender-neutral leave policy would be implemented, ensuring that attorneys and staff members alike will receive additional time off following the birth or adoption of their new child.

All employees at the firm will now receive 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave, and on top of that, Taft is now offering on-demand child and adult back-up care that will be available in the employee’s home, in a hotel (if the employee is traveling for firm-related business), or in an adult dependent’s residing city.

Christine L. Birch, Taft’s Chief Operating Officer, said this of the firm’s new policy:

It is an exciting time at Taft as we implement new and forward-looking policies. We understand that it can be challenging at times to manage both work and family needs. When life is easier on the home front, it is also easier to have a rewarding and fulfilling career. We’re constantly looking for meaningful ways to advance and support our attorneys and staff.

Taft joins many other Biglaw firms that have recently adopted enhanced, gender-neutral parental leave plans, and a handful of other firms that treat their staff members somewhat equitably in terms of parental leave.

We’ve often wondered whether Biglaw employees will choose to take full advantage of the parental leave policies that are being offered by their firms, and it’s now clear that large firms really want them to, without fearing for their safety of their jobs upon their return to work. These benefits are being offered for a reason: these law firms want associates to feel that they can grow with the firm — not just professionally, but personally. Taft’s new policy strives help associates and staff do just that.

Kudos to Taft on its new parental leave benefits. Firms stepping up their family-friendly policies is something we’ll continue to pay attention to — particularly as we head into recruiting season. Hopefully your firm is changing its ways when it comes to important policies like parental leave. Please let us know when it happens.

Taft Announces Firm-Wide, Family-Friendly Benefits [Taft Stettinius & Hollister]

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

It really shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the Democratic presidential candidate who is running the hardest on their accomplishments as a lawyer is winning in the category of Biglaw donations. Kamala Harris is leaning heavily into her time as a prosecutor — despite some progressives believing her time prosecuting the parents of truant children and then laughing about it is disqualifying — claiming she is the candidate “who is going to be on that debate stage with Donald Trump and defeat him by being able to prosecute the case against four more years.” Sure, there are other Dems in the field who are lawyers — some even spent time in Biglaw themselves — but Harris’s theme of returning to the rule of law appears to be striking a chord in lawyers interested in contributing to a campaign this election season.

As reported by Law.com, Harris has brought in almost $675,000 in donations from folks at Am Law 100 firms with Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren also cracking six figures from top law firms:

Between his campaign launch in April and the end of June, Biden, the former vice president and the leading candidate in national polls, raised $575,000 from the 2019 Am Law 100, an annual ranking of firms based on gross revenue. Biden’s haul was about $100,000 less than what Harris pulled in during the first six months of the year, according to a National Law Journal review of campaign contributions.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg brought in more than $450,000 in the first half of the year from those same 100 law firms. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts raised about $125,000 from top law firms, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pulled in more than $30,000.

While Harris’s messaging of law and order is likely appealing to lawyers, her husband has a lot of Biglaw connections, what with him being a Biglaw partner himself (Doug Emhoff is a partner in the Los Angeles office of DLA Piper) — and that helps:

“Her husband, a good friend of mine, is a highly regarded Big Law partner in L.A. So he’s got a good network of his own,” said Daniel Shallman, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Covington & Burling.

And she’s getting money from Biglaw attorneys with a background in political circles:

Her backers include Obama-era Justice Department veterans such as Ronald Machen, who served from 2010 to 2015 as U.S. attorney in Washington. Machen, now a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, contributed $2,800 to the Harris campaign in March.

Harris also received contributions from law firm partners who worked closely with her sister Maya’s husband, Tony West, a former Obama-era associate U.S. attorney general who is now Uber’s general counsel. Jenner & Block partner Thomas Perrelli, who preceded West in the Justice Department’s third-ranking role, donated $2,800 to Harris in February. West’s successor, Stuart Delery, now a Gibson Dunn partner in Washington, gave $1,000 to Harris in March.

This all might be good news for Harris in the short term, but the actual primaries are months away. It remains to be seen if support in Biglaw can translate into a lead in the polls.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

In 2014, I wrote about how Haben Girma, a deafblind lawyer, used technology to practice law and advocate for the rights of the disabled. Back then, Haben, a Harvard Law graduate, had already been named a White House “Champion of Change” and was serving as a Skadden Fellowship Attorney at Disability Rights Advocates (DRA).

Since then, as I learned from her just-published memoir, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, she’s had continued success with her efforts to advocate for the disabled, all the while accomplishing in the span of just a few years what many of us can only hope to tackle in a lifetime.

For starters, she was part of the DRA legal team that prevailed in its efforts to force Scribd, the eBook company that provides online access to millions of digital titles, to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The United States District Court for the District of Vermont concluded that “because Scribd’s website and apps are not programmed to be accessible through [screen reader] software, Scribd is denying blind persons access to all of the services, privileges, advantages, and accommodations that Scribd offers and is excluding them from accessing information critical to their education, employment, and community integration.”

In her memoir, you also learn that since that victory, she’s: 1) spoken at the White House and met President Obama during the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the ADA, 2) received the Helen Keller Achievement Award, 3) made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and 4) been honored by President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

And those experiences just scratch the surface of what you’ll find in this book. Haben’s memoir is a thoughtful and entertaining tale that offers an enlightening glimpse into so many aspects of her world. Her journey takes you from her early years as the child of Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants in California to the halls of Harvard Law School and beyond.

Given my tech-focused perspective, I found the descriptions of the technology that she used throughout her schooling to be fascinating. But as Haben points out again and again throughout the book, while technology plays an important part in making the world more accessible to the disabled, what matters even more are cultural attitudes about disabilities and the disabled.

This concept was driven home in Chapter 18, wherein Haben shared her uphill struggle for accessibility to the menu at her college’s dining hall. All she sought was advance knowledge of what was being served ahead of time so that she could successfully navigate the dining hall and choose foods that comported to her vegetarian diet. Her simple request was that the menu be forwarded to her in an email each morning; software on her computer would handle the rest and convert the emails into digital braille for her.

She was inexplicably met with resistance and non-compliance, and, after what can only be described as a series of Herculean efforts on her part — and the threat of litigation — she finally received the accommodations that she needed and was entitled to. It was this experience that inspired her to attend law school and devote her life to fighting for the rights of the disabled.

In continuation of that goal, Haben shifted her focus in 2016 and launched a business providing disability rights consulting, writing, and public speaking. As part of those efforts, she offers advice on ways to increase access for people with disabilities.

At the end of her memoir she includes a short guide designed to aid in that goal. Here are two excerpts that I hope will help lawyers and law firms be more inclusive to those who are disabled:

Harmful Messages to Avoid

• Nondisabled people should feel grateful they don’t have disabilities. This perpetuates hierarchies of us versus them, continuing the marginalization of people with disabilities.
• Successful people with disabilities overcame their disabilities. When the media portrays the problem as the disability, society is not encouraged to change. The biggest barriers exist not in the person, but in the physical, social, and digital environment. People with disabilities and their communities succeed when the community decides to dismantle digital, attitudinal, and physical barriers.
• Flat, one-dimensional portrayals of people with disabilities. Stories that reduce a person to just their disability encourage potential employers, teachers, and other community members to similarly reduce the person to just a disability.
• Victimizing Language. Avoid victimizing language when describing medical conditions and other aspects of the disability experience. E.g., “She is blind” is neutral, but, “She suffers from blindness” encourages pity.
• Jumping through hoops to avoid saying “disability” and related words.

WHAT CAN ORGANIZATIONS DO TO BECOME MORE ACCESSIBLE?

• Conduct a survey to identify physical, social, and digital barriers. Work to remove these barriers.
• Plan for accessibility from the start. Designing a new service or product with access in mind is easier than trying to jury-rig accessibility after the product or service has been created.
• Increase hiring of people with disabilities—one of the largest untapped talent pools.
• Hold regular disability rights training sessions to help create a more inclusive culture.
• Promote positive disability stories in the media.

And, last but not least, if for some inexplicable reason you’re not yet sold on this book, then let me tell you about Chapter 20. In it, Haben details her somewhat rocky, but ultimately successful path toward a wonderful relationship with her first guide dog, Maxine. Heartbreakingly, Maxine died of cancer in 2018, and Haben went on to train a new lifelong companion and now shares her days with her guide dog, Mylo.

I’ll leave you with Haben’s touching description of her unique bond with her guide dogs: “Love takes time. Love forms through the expression of genuine appreciation, the creation of clear boundaries, the practice of forgiveness, and mutual respect. Over time, these experiences weave together, forming a strong bond between two beings. Time and experience have fostered a trust that draws us together, building a shared understanding that continues to grow.”

Wise words for any relationship whether it’s between a deafblind person and her guide dog, or two people.

I guarantee you’ll find many more tidbits of wisdom and insight where that came, so what are you waiting for?  Grab a copy of her book right now.

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.